Hostage deal with Hamas will not stop Rafah invasion, Benjamin Netanyahu warns

On Sunday, the Israeli prime minister dismissed concerns about Washington’s support, arguing that “the US agrees with us on the goal of destroying Hamas and on the goal of releasing the hostages”.

“The decisions of how to do that are left with us, and with me and the elected cabinet of Israel,” he said.

He also criticised Lord Cameron, the Foreign Secretary, who last month floated the prospect of the international recognition of a Palestinian state.

“If people try to foist it on us, it will be a terrible mistake, because it would be seen as a reward for terror, after the most atrocious attack committed against the Jewish people since the Holocaust,” he said.

“[The] people of Israel are not going to buy it, and if you want peace, you shouldn’t go that route.”

Micky Zohar, the Israeli minister of culture, told The Telegraph that the Israeli army is “ready to start the war at Rafah”.

“The terror organisation Hamas needs to decide if it agrees to a deal to release hostages before we enter there,” he said.

Bring them home

Tzachi Hanegbi, the national security advisor, told Israeli broadcaster Channel 12 on Saturday that a deal with Hamas must include a return of all hostages, and that the temporary ceasefire could “under no condition be interpreted as an end to the war”.

Hamas is yet to officially comment on the details of the proposal, but has previously stated that any ceasefire with Israel must be long-term and include a full withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza.

The Israeli army continued to strike both southern, central and northern Gaza over the weekend, with dozens of Palestinians killed, according to local media. Nearly 30,000 Palestinians have been killed over the course of the war. Israel claims that 12,000 of those are Hamas fighters.

Israel announced it had arrested more than 200 “terror suspects” at the Nasser hospital in southern Gaza in the past week.

Some 134 hostages are thought to remain in Gaza, with about 50 presumed dead, according to a report in the New York Times.

Released hostages from the November ceasefire have testified that some of the women still held captive in Gaza are being sexually assaulted.

Thousands of Israelis demonstrated across Israel on Saturday evening in protest of the government’s handling of the hostage crisis. Twenty-one people were arrested and several injured in Tel Aviv, where police used water cannons and mounted police officers to disperse demonstrations.

Families of hostages have long accused the government of abandoning their loved ones by refusing to compromise on its terms for a deal, while calling on Mr Netanyahu to resign.

Betzalel Smotrich, the Israeli finance minister, caused uproar earlier this week when he told Israeli public broadcaster KAN that returning the hostages from Gaza “isn’t the most important thing” for Israel and that a deal shouldn’t be made “at any price”.